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Saturday, January 21, 2017

A Clarification of Personal Beliefs

A Clarification of Personal Beliefs

I've been asked by a friend of mine to clarify some of my views of the world. After a lengthy discussion of the government, he approached me with a synopsis of how he sees my worldviews, and since his synopsis is common in those that believe in the benefits of bigger government I thought I'd respond.

He has attacked me from five different angles, and to quote him directly his statements were;

You believe money is the highest form of motivation.

You believe money determines passion and the pursuit of talent/happiness.

You have a significant mistrust of the government.

You feel the government is best utilized as a militarized/police entity.

Your version of a non-evil government is one in which the military and police protect those who have from those who don't, especially in cases where access to education, healthcare, and food and water are concerned.

In these five attacks I can already sense the Marxism and the feeling of class warfare, along with the classic bullying attacks used by those who prescribe to cultural Marxist ideologies. The first attack from those who oppose the free market and the free market of ideas is always as such; "you only care about money and don't care about the less fortunate." Of course, this is a logical fallacy since at its core it is nothing more than an ad hominem attack. I do have to give credit to my friend's points, as they only vaguely allude to the typical response; he is more concerned with how much I value money, and my fear of the government and its ability to provide for citizens through social programs. Regardless, the desire for a government controlled market is clearly underlined in these arguments.

I'm going to go through each point one-by-one and try to clarify to my beliefs to my best ability.

1. You believe money is the highest form of motivation.

The full quote for my friends first point;

"You believe money is the highest form of motivation. You also believe that a single-payer system implies equal pay regardless of job title."

To put this in context, he and I were discussing the role of the government and its involvement in the healthcare industry. His argument is a rebuttal to my argument;

"Higher profits lead to more jobs, better products, and better salaries. Lower profits lead to less jobs, worse products, and less salaries. Although we like to think that doctors do what they do out of the good of their heart, we can't deny the fact that there would be less neurosurgeons if they were paid the same as nurses."

As a quick note: I hate when people quote themselves, so I want to state I'm only doing this to help contextualize the discussion.

I think there may be a misunderstanding from my initial response. When I said that there would be less neurosurgeons if they were paid the same as nurses, I didn't intend to suggest that a single-payer healthcare system would pay healthcare employees a constant salary. My intention was to state that if there was a true single-payer healthcare system applied to the US's current healthcare system, the salaries of neurosurgeons would fall way below market value. If the salary for neurosurgeons falls below market value, then there would be less people interested in undergoing the lengthy, challenging, and incredibly expensive process of becoming a neurosurgeon.

Different careers require different levels of investment. The most common investment is the college degree or university education. If a person spends money on a college degree, they expect to be able to get a job that pays enough so that the person can get at least an equal return of investment for their degree.

I'm going to create a hypothetical scenario to explain how jobs are valued in the market. I'll periodically link to the sources used for data collection, and to calculators I used for estimated expenses.

Jane is an 18-year-old girl from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and is interested in a career in plumbulignartistry. It's her absolute passion in life, and she can't imagine herself doing anything else. She wants to attend a local private school because plumbulignology (like neurosurgery) is a specialized field of study with few renowned university programs teaching such courses, and the school conveniently has a great program in plumbulignology. Her parents make a modest living, with both family members working as elementary school teachers with $44,015 annual salaries (the average salary for a teacher in Winston-Salem is $53,794).

Jane will really need to do some deep thinking in order to decide whether or not she should take this plunge into becoming a plumbulignartist. First, how much does her university cost? In the 2016-2017 school year, private schools charged an average of $33,480 for both tuition and school fees, so let's assume that Jane's tuition and school fees will cost a total of $133,920 for her four years of schooling. In order to be able to do such a thing, Jane will have to apply for federal student loans.

Jane goes to a FAFSA calculator to get a proper estimate of how much she will receive in federal subsidized loans.

As once can see, FAFSA will only grant Jane with $12,722, since the government assumes that Jane's parents will be able to afford $20,758. Sadly for Jane, the government often overestimate the Expected Family Contribution for middle class families. After tax, her parents only make $72,859.48. If we factor in health insurance ($1117.53), car insurance ($2060 for two cars), mortgage ($860), and other expenses, that number quickly falls. According to Career Trends, the cost of living for a family of three in Winston-Salem is $55,217. So, in total, Jane's parents have an extra $17,642.48 to spare on Jane's schooling.
So, since the government expects Jane's parents to pay for $20,758 of Jane's yearly tuition and fees, Jane will have to begin looking elsewhere for loans. Next, Jane calculates in how much she will receive in Federal Direct Unsubsidized loans (here we will assume that Jane will receive the maximum amounts for the sake of the hypothetical, and as a better illustration for children of middle class families). Let's do a little math and see how much debt Jane will have after graduation.

Jane has a pretty nice chunk of money set up for herself here, but she's still a little shy of the $133,920 total that she needs in order to follow her dream of becoming the greatest plumbulignartist in modern history. Luckily for her, the school she is applying to offers a Perkins loan! Now we'll add this loan to the mix (Perkins loans are only offered to students with extreme financial need, but to understand the overall investment of a college education in terms of student loans, I've added it as one of Jane's financial resources):

Perkins Loan Total:

$5,500 = FPL
$11,000 = SPL
$16,500 = JPL
$22,000 = GPL

GFDSL + GFDUL + PL = $100,508.13

Things are looking great for Jane, but she still needs an extra $33,411.87 to afford her degree in plumbulingnartistry. Her luck hasn't run out yet, since the school she is applying to has offered to pay the rest of the tuition in scholarship as recognition for her excellent 3.7 high school academic GPA.

Jane is so close to making her decision, but there are a couple more things she needs to investigate before she decides to cave to her desires of studying plumbulignology and plumbulignocaphry. She continues her research by calculating a good estimate of how long it will take her to pay off her loans and how much per month she'll have to pay (I used a 20 year plan, since it takes an average of 21 years for students to pay off student loan debt for a bachelor's degree, but federal student loans are forgiven after 20 years):

Jane sees the number and her eyes widen. It costs a lot more to become a college educated plumbulignartist than she initially thought. She tells herself that the risk is worth the reward. She begins to estimate a salary needed to be able to pay off the loans after she graduates, especially since she'll only have nine months until her payments begin. In order to do so, she adds together her loans with the cost of living for a single adult with no children in Winston-Salem:

Annual Debt Collection = $7,404
Annual Cost of Living for Winston-Salem, North Carolina, as calculated for a single adult with no children = $29,144
$7,404 + $29,144 = $36,548

So this figure, $36,548, what does it mean? It means that if Jane wants the added value of a plumbulignartist's degree to at least cover the initial investment of her $148,096.80 worth of student debt, she needs to find a career that pays at least $36,548 a year. The student loans are Jane's initial investment and her cost of production, and her salary will be her marginal returns.

At this point Jane realizes that her choice is entirely dependent on what the average salary for a plumbulignartist is. As soon as she figures out what she could reasonable expect as payment for her specialized, college-educated skill, she can be confident in her choice to invest so much time and money into this career field. Jane rushes to her computer and quickly tacks away at her keyboard until she's left waiting for Google to giver her search results for the query "average plumbulignartist salary." To her dismay, Jane finds out that plumbulignartists don't make much, and in fact "plumbolignartist" is a word I made up to represent a low-paying career that requires an expensive college education (plumbum ligno is Latin for "wood pencil;" a plumbolignartist is a person that makes expensive, handmade yellow #2 wooden pencils; imagine this but it costs $400). After coming to this realization, Jane quickly sees her dreams crumble in front of her very eyes as she realizes how much it truly costs to have a specialized job with low market value. She has a choice; she can follow her dreams, even though she understands that she will live most of her life in poverty doing the work that she does, or she can pursue a degree in agriculture and do plumbulignartistry in her free time.

For generations Y, Z, and Alpha, this process of investing huge amounts of money into degrees with low market value is a major problem. For example, in 2013 bachelors' degrees in psychology were the fourth most commonly achieved by college graduates, but jobs that require psychology degrees as a prerequisite are infamously rare and underpaying. The reason for this (the over-saturation of the job market with college educated workers caused by federal financial aid) can be argued another time, but it's important to point out that while more and more students pay for a psychology degree every year, unemployment for psychology majors is on the rise. Eventually, there will come a point where students stop seeking out psychology degrees (but that depends on when our education system stops telling young kids that they won't ever be successful without a college degree regardless of what the degree's focus is).

To look at a real world example, the US is currently undergoing a severe nursing shortage. Across there country, nursing schools are having extreme difficulty motivating students to enroll in their programs, and enrollment rates having been following a general decline since 2008. The nursing industry also has an extremely high turnover rate. This study from SuccessFactors for Healthcare, Inc. states that many nurses feel overworked and under-rewarded. Since their are less nurses working in hospitals, nurses currently in the field have to pick up the slack. One of the clear defining factors that has driven the nursing shortage is the steady decline in the average salary for nurses since 2008. Last year, the average salary earned by nurses was $61,875. If we take a look at the cost of becoming a nurse, schools that offer a Bachelor's of Science Degree in Nursing charge tuition prices anywhere from $40,000 a year to $100,000. Associate's degrees in nursing can cost even more per year ranging anywhere from $65,000 to $100,000 a year in tuition. There is an argument that there are cheaper alternatives for nurses who use community college programs to achieve their BSN's or ADN's, but the jobs available to a nurse with one of these degrees are still only worth a $66,774 annual salary. It's important to note that there are two basic types of nursing care; there's inpatient care and outpatient care. A job in outpatient care can be acquired with an ADN or a BSN, but inpatient care often requires expensive master's and even doctoral degrees in nursing that can cost even more hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nurse practitioners are generally the best paid workers in the nursing industry making around $100,000, but their job description includes attaining a BSN, gaining multiple years in the industry, pursuing a Master's of Science in Nursing, the gaining more experience, and now there is a growing push to require all nurse practitioners to achieve a doctoral degree in nursing science. Imagine having to do all of the work that a doctor or surgeon has to do, but getting paid half the price.

To wrap all of this up, I don't think that money is the highest form of motivation, but it would be ridiculous to not assume that money has some of the most powerful incentives in a person's life choices. I believe that the human race has a natural drive to succeed, and since assets and money can be measurable factors of success, it's natural for many to seek out achieving as much of it as possible.

2. You believe money determines passion and the pursuit of talent/happiness.

I believe that money helps fuel passion and the pursuit of talent/happiness. As a musician, I am constantly thinking about passive ways to make money so that I can spend more time making music. I like to think that this is how most musicians/people think.

On the other hand, if I didn't have a passion, I wouldn't care about money. If I didn't wish to pursue talent or happiness, then I also wouldn't care about money. Even if my sole passion in this world was eating and sleeping, and my pursuit of happiness only consisted of surviving, I would have to make money in order to do so. Let's say my ideal happiness consisted of me living in the woods alone by myself surviving off of the land without the need for money; I would need money to finance the move from my home to the forest.

3. You have a significant mistrust of the government.

My friend's complete quote;

"You have a significant mistrust of the government, specifically the Democratic party."

Did you know that between 1953 and 1962, the CIA under project MK ULTRA performed illegal experiments with Lysergic acid diethylamide in an attempt to create a system of mind control? Did you know these experiments included forcing test subjects to unwillingly undergo the effects of LSD for days and weeks at a time? Did you know some experimentation included supplying doses of LSD to random subjects including fellow CIA operatives, politicians and military officials, and random American citizens? Did you know that the experiments only stopped because the CIA switched to a more powerful and more effective drug called 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate (BZ)? Did you know that the US government denied testing BZ on US citizens, but in 2010 a group of veterans provided proof that the CIA experimented on them even after project MK ULTRA was reportedly closed down?

I do have a strong distrust for the government, and everyone should. It has grown so powerful that many agencies operate with virtually no oversight whatsoever. This is only a scratch of some of the real evil our government does every day. My fear of the government is no partisan. I'm assuming my friend is alluding to the fact that I was very wary of Hillary Clinton and President Obama during the previous election. Since this subject is so entirely complicated that it would literally require 9 months' worth of writing, I would implore my friend to look at some of the summaries of the past Wikileaks releases.

I would also implore my friend to look at the "media cheat sheet" section of this blog to see how few companies there are that really control our media, and how many of them donate heavily to the Democratic party. In regards to the election, every one of those corporations tried to push an agenda that Hillary Clinton had a 90+% chance of winning the election. This should be terrifying in and of itself.

I fear any politician that pushes for more governmental power, regardless of their political status. Fear the Bush dynasty, the Clinton dynasty, and the Obama administration equally. I hate inept congress members from a bipartisan standpoint as well. I don't consider myself a Republican or a Democrat, I am only a person that believes in the necessity to conserve the government and check its growing power.

4. You feel the government is best utilized as a militarized/police entity.

This is a classic cultural Marxist attempt to try and reframe words and project ideologies upon someone else in an attempt to discredit them. I know that my friend is implying that my view of the government is fascist by nature, but I am also very confident that as soon as I publish this my friend will deny that it was his intention. His attack is left vague on purpose, and I'm honestly tempted to give a vague answer and leave it as that.

To start, the government is militarized. Every government has a military of some sort. The initial reason behind any government is protection of its citizens. All governments in history started as a group of people paying an entity for protection.

The government exists to uphold its constitution and protect its citizens' basic human rights. If its constitution states that humans have a right to string cheese, the government is obligated to supply its citizens with cream cheese.

The only reason for a government to act outside of its constitution is to gain power. When the government acts to gain power, it is for the best interest of the government as opposed to the people. When the government acts in its own best interest as opposed to the people, we see scenarios like Flint, Michigan's water crisis occur. You have a group of people giving upwards of 40% of their income away to a government that is supposed to protect them, and they still can't even get access to something so simple as clean, drinkable water.

5. Your version of a non-evil government is one in which the military and police protect those who have from those who don't, especially in cases where access to education, healthcare, and food and water are concerned.

My version of a non-evil government protects its citizens from criminals and foreign invaders. It doesn't "protect those who have from those who don't" because it doesn't try to regulate outside of its constitutional ability. I don't really understand this sentence at all, but it seems that my friend is telling me my non-evil government is going to protect those with healthcare from those without healthcare. What does that even mean? Are people without healthcare going to attack people with healthcare? Are the uneducated going to rise up and seize the means of production from the educated? How is the military involved with the protection of healthcare? What do the police have to do with education?

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